


your heart is like the ocean

by wiildflowers



Series: i'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Fighting, Football Player Eren Yeager, Friends to Lovers, German Armin Arlert, In Which I Quote Rilke, M/M, Pining, Turkish Eren Yeager
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-22 17:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15587229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiildflowers/pseuds/wiildflowers
Summary: There was a flash of blonde hair and blue eyes, the first thing he noticed amid the papers flying through the air like feathers. The second was that light didn't so much illuminate the boy's face as it did spill out of him.





	1. Chapter 1

Hallways were simple enough things. A break in tedious schoolwork, a few waves in various directions, a possible high five in the direction of the new linebacker who had somehow managed to make the team.

 

Students poured through the halls, occasionally stopping to talk, forming together like lumps in curdled milk. It was a normal day, in all possible ways. Eren was late, as usual, storming through the hallway with the force and speed now expected from the school's quarterback, although his momentum was soon halted as he slammed into another figure. There was a flash of blonde hair and ocean blue eyes, the first thing he noticed amid the papers flying through the air like feathers. The second was that light didn't so much illuminate the boy's face as it did spill out of him. A single thought ran through his head before it collided with the cold, linoleum floor; maybe hallways weren't as simple as he had thought.

 

The offending boy was thrown under him, and Eren couldn't help but note that Newton's first law of motion was, in fact, true, as they continued to slide across the ground a few more inches before finally stopping. The hallway went silent for a moment before students' short attention spans finally gave out and they resumed their conversations as if nothing had ever happened. Go figure. Eren scrambled up, of course, with the practiced grace of someone who had taken more than a few hits and had remaining bruises to prove it. The boy, however, simply laid there on his back; a sort of deer in the headlights look in those cerulean eyes. They were depth-less, he remembered even months later. It was almost as if he wouldn't let himself forget.

 

Almost hesitantly, Eren offered a hand, waving it gently in front of the boy with hair the color of sunshine. The poor teen's chest was rising and falling with every hasty breath he took in, as if silently thinking the gods for even being capable of doing such. If those eyes were any indication, it seemed to dawn on the boy pretty soon on that any hope of arriving to class on time was buried somewhere among the flurry of papers still raining down on the two of them. A few moments later, when the blonde finally took his hand, scrambling to his feet with the grace of a newborn gazelle, Eren couldn't help but notice how he was avoiding eye contact.

 

Not that it was all that surprising, there weren't many people at least wary of the brunette, no, what concerned him more was the bruised skin just above the boy's wrist that quickly became apparent when he reached up to take the tan hand. It was in stark contrast to the pale skin it seemed to be resting on, next to a wrist that appeared to be made of glass, much like the boy himself. Sometimes looks can be deceiving. But the papers are fluttering through the air like snowflakes and those eyes, oh those eyes say otherwise. It would've been rude to ask.

 

Silence hangs over the pair like a blanket as they continue to pick up their respective things. The peal of the bell that began class rang through the air long ago, and the boy's movements are growing more and more fitful the longer they stay out in the open like this, quite obviously where they're not meant to be. Eren sneaks a peek into one of his notebooks while he's struggling to wrangle papers back into their folders. _Armin_. It's a name of wide open places, of the smell of air before a calming rain, and the taste of saltwater on your tongue. He slips the notebook into the others' pile, which looks like it's almost swallowing the boy up.

 

 It's funny how easily Eren got into class with a soft sigh of the German teacher and a calm reprimand when Armin was trailing along, not far behind him. A faint apology falls from the blonde's lips, and somehow everything seems alright again. Somehow, it seems like nothing had changed. Taking his seat behind the boy with eyes like the ocean, Eren decides that everything had changed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *I toss my nationality headcanons at you* TAKE THEM they will come into play later.
> 
> This is the first chapter of what will (hopefully) be many! I wrote this quite some time ago, and found it today while cleaning up some files! Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Eren sent more glares in the directions of school bullies the following week than he ever had in his life. Of course, the boy with hair the color of sunlight never looked up from his books. The bruise on his wrist slowly faded and eventually disappeared altogether. The weather grew cooler.

  
  
He made no real move to speak to Armin, instead, he chose to gaze at the back of his blond head and let his chest fill with a dreadful kind of hope. He soon learned that most of the team knew Armin, but not for good reasons. A boy would approach him with a folder and an acetic smile, waiting for a reply. He murmured soft phrases of an unfamiliar language and simply stalked away; clutching his biology books to his chest with the kind of grip you use to hold the one thing in the world that made sense. Eren would know. He held the football the same way.

 

It became more and more noticeable after a few more days of watching; how Armin would sometimes get stopped on the way to lunch to pick up folders after a half-hearted glare, how the idle whispering seemed to follow him. How there were an odd amount of pokes with the sharp end of a pencil, “just meant to get his attention”.

  
  
The bruises disappearing from Armin's figure slowly made an appearance on Eren's caramel skin instead. He frequently reassured himself that the other guy in the fight had always looked much worse. One particular incident ended in a bloody nose, a split lip, and a nurse visit for a teen twice his size. The bully didn't come back for two weeks and he seemed to hold himself differently when he did. Eren took a certain level of pride in that.

  
  
_There was a bit of a ruckus, quiet murmurings filling up the already small hallway, bouncing off of crimson lockers and into Eren's ears. His gaze flickers to the right, and Eren immediately regrets looking._

  
  
_Armin's eyes are locked on the face of a teen almost a head taller than him, fists clenched around a page of what appeared to be math homework. There was a sort of fire in his expression that Eren had never seen before, and for the first time, he wondered if those bruises were from a quick tongue and quicker wit, not from standing idly by and trying to be a peacemaker. The teen leered, Armin glared, and Eren saw red. His fist connected with the teen's jaw, the teen's fist connected with his lip, and then his nose. The boy with eyes like the ocean was yelling no, no, no, and a shock of cadmium yellow hair barely missed his fist as the teen fell to the floor. Eren did the same a few moments later. There was the deafening sound of silence in his ears all the way to the nurse's office, like a distant scream._

  
  
_It was the first time they had ever really talked; Eren laying on a cot with ice on his swollen lip and hints of blood still on his face, some of it not his own. Armin perched on a nearby chair, more concerned than he should've been at the situation. Eren felt fine. He had endured worse. But he wouldn't dare say such a thing if it stopped the words pouring from the male's lips and caused the look of quiet concern to fade from his eyes. He was glad he didn't, in hindsight, because if he had he wouldn't have learned that angel’s hands tremble when they wrap gauze._

 

“It feels like I’ve known you for longer than this,” he says one day, interrupting an analysis of a poem about eyes and blood (and love, love, love) that he hadn’t fully understood anyways. The air was cool but somehow still oppressive in his small room, and Armin was pacing from corner to corner like a bird that hadn’t learned how to fly. The blond seemed to pause at that, although not for long.

 

“I’d know if you did,” He didn’t say anything else, and Eren didn’t prompt him, seemingly content with the birdsong making its way through the window and semi-amiable silence. That was a fair point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was beta'ed by the wonderful [NaiKireiYuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaiKireiYuki/pseuds/NaiKireiYuki)! Go check their stuff out if you get the time, it's really good!
> 
> Here's [that poem about eyes and blood](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/173083-extinguish-my-eyes-i-ll-go-on-seeing-you-seal-my), it's a bit... much for this AU, but I got the name for the series from it and I thought I should be consistent. I hope you enjoyed so far! Any and all feedback is appreciated.


End file.
